Chapter 1 The Abduction

• It was a little past midnight. Outside the luxury home, the yard lay in silence; the water in the swimming pool, ice-still. Two armed guards patrolled.
• A shadow descended the fence like fluid. Then, shadows. They moved like smoke, their boots soundless against the floor tiles. In a swift move, the two guards crumpled.
• The front door splintered inward. Black figures surged through, weapons taking the lead. Two guards raised rifles, but just a split second faster, muffled shots thudded in rapid bursts: the two guards crumpled, their blood streaking the wall and furniture.
• The shout of “intruders!” came from the staircase but was followed immediately by three muffled shots that sent a body tumbling down the stairs.
• That was when Nina froze in front of the fridge. She had gone downstairs to the kitchen to have some yogurt as her elder brother’s not-quite-low chit-chat with his girlfriend in his room kicked sleep out of her eyes. He was on the phone and playing a video game simultaneously.
• She was in law school, and her brother was in the police academy; they both came home the previous day to plan their father’s fiftieth birthday. It was going to be huge. As a syndicate boss, the party would harbor powerful people from around the country.
• She had run into her father in the hallway, where he was pacing while on his cellphone; he blew her a kiss.
• Her heartbeat raced as she quietly moved towards the kitchen entrance that opened close to the stairwell. She saw three masked figures gliding noiselessly up the stairs like ghosts, their guns pointing, ready to shoot. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She thought she was dreaming until she heard her father’s shout rip through the doorway.
• “Nina, run!”
• The house erupted. Door banged. Gunfire whispered, silenced but deadly. Nina’s heart thundered as she retreated backwards in horror. Then she tripped and fell, dragging the knife holder with her as she grabbed for balance. Knives, different sizes, clattered on the floor. She scrambled for the back door, not sure of why she tripped.
• “No, please…” came her mother’s voice that was cut short almost immediately.
• “Mum!...no!” Nina screamed involuntarily as she fumbled with the latch, almost forgetting how to open a door. She was trembling vigorously. Just as she was about to be successful, a hand seized her hair and dragged her back, her feet scrabbling against the floor.
• “No, please, no,” she cried, clawing and scratching the arm over her head with all her strength. She grabbed around and her hand caught a knife on the floor. She swung it hard at the hand above her head. And she slashed his wrist. Or, maybe not.
• But for a breathless second, her hair was free.
• “Feisty little bird,” a masked voice rasped.
• She quickly scrambled to her feet and bolted out of the door, for the gate, bare feet scraping the tiled floor, desperate to escape. But there was another figure waiting at the gate, unknown to her, just to ensure no one escaped.
• She glanced backwards at the building as she got to the gate, hoping to see a family member escaping too, and barely had time to gasp at the slow crackle of flames licking curtains, set alight to erase all evidence, before his hand clasped around her arm.
• “Let go!” she snarled, twisting like a trapped animal, thrashing wildly, her nails raking against leather, her teeth sinking into his wrist in an attempt to free herself.
• The man did not flinch. With a sharp growl, he swung his hand and struck her across the face. Pain exploded behind her eyes, and the world tilted into blackness.
• He lifted her limp body as if she were a doll and went to the back of an SUV waiting nearby. The boot opened, and he lowered her body into it. He pulled out a duct tape and sealed her lips, then shut the door and went over to the passenger side. The engine was on, with the driver’s hand on the wheel, ready to speed off. The others joined them shortly, and the vehicle vanished into the night, almost noiselessly.
• *******************************************
• Nina’s mind surfaced slowly as her eyes opened. Her head throbbed; her wrists ached. Her lips hurt badly; the tape was off. Her cheek throbbed where the assassin’s hand had struck, a deep heat radiating across her jaw. She tried to move, but a coarse rope bit into her skin, her hands numb.
• She blinked against a dim light; a single bulb swung from the ceiling, casting long, crooked shadows across smooth timber walls. She lay on a wooden cot pushed to the wall in what looked like a…basement. Or a cabin? Two iron-barred windows on the adjacent sides of the room, small and high up, out of reach. The cot was directly under the windows.
• A four-legged simple coffee table and seat sat at one end of the room beneath the other window, while the opposite end harbored a washroom hidden by a loosely hanging shower curtain. Only one steel door a few feet from the cot. The room was large and almost empty, especially the area between the cot and the washroom.
• The silence was worse than the violence, save for faint voices coming from outside the steel door. It was daytime, not sure how long she had been out.
• Her breath caught as memory crashed back — the fire, her parents’ screams cut short, her father’s air kiss, her brother that would have probably been shot before he could realize their home had been invaded, the figures moving with brutal precision, then the strike by the beast. She clenched her teeth against the sob threatening to escape, forcing herself to stay silent as tears rolled down her cheeks.
• They shouldn’t hear you. Don’t let them know you’re awake.
• Like it mattered.
• The steel door groaned open. One of the men entered, still masked.
• “Finally,” he said, “our WWE undefeated long-standing champion is awake.”
• She could hear the men laugh from the living room.
• Two of the men were playing cards on a four-seater dining table that stood between the living room and the kitchenette. One sprawled casually on the sofa, busy with his phone. All with their masks pulled upwards to the foreheads, revealing their faces.
• One of the men at the table, Kirk, dropped his cards and went to the kitchenette. They all knew their individual tasks. “Nobody warned me,” he said amidst laughter as he put a meal together on a tray. “I thought it was business as usual.”
• “Why? You met your match.” The man he was at the table with, Bryan, chuckled.
• “Believe me, I was no match,” Kirk said before pulling his mask down to cover his face while he carried the tray to the room where Nina was. Others laughed on. He dropped the tray on the coffee table and moved over to the cot to peer into her face.
• Nina turned her face away toward the wall and rolled onto her side, backing him.